WHY DID GANDHIJI NOT FAVOUR DEMOCRACY ?--13

Gandhiji was a person growing each and every moment in his life. He himself had said that please do not copy me I may be wrong. Please do experiment yourself with Truth and find the reality of each and every act that you do. He started experiments with Truth as early as he left his legal practice and esteblished Tolstoy Farm in South Africa. He left his legal practice. It was a fact that his law-practice was, in those days, four to five thousand per month. Why did he leave his law practice because he realized that in this professon one has to compromise with untruth in order to save his client. Only then he could make money.

Gandhi brought about a drastic change in his life style. He started farming, sandal making and later on spinning. Later on he also changed in his diet, the renounciation of wealth. It is a story of as early as 1909. It was the influence of Leo Tolstoy. It was Tolstoy's book Kingdom of God is within You that opened Gandhi's eyes. So there was no base for opting the Democretic life-style. It is as clear as glass that Gandhi, or for that matter Tolstoy was supporting the Democracy. To Gandhi it was very clear that Democracy is no positive a system, more than a hundred years back,

It is the readyness of human mind for change, that also for positive and good of himself/ herself but for the entire humanity as a whole. Ordinary people scuffle over small issues and spent nuch time of their life in shallow matters. It is basically a psyclogical problem. It is called Prakriti. It is difficult to change Prakriti but it not impossible to change. It is not only in the case of Gandhi. It is applicable with all human beings. In our ordinary life, we experience that every day. For example if two persons are differing with each others, the main problem is that one person who has tension with the another person over an issue, because he does not think with his mind. Counterary, he/her always keep the mind of opposit person and go on thinking, without using or thinking with his/her own mind. This tendency is at the back of the tension in the Society as a whole as well as the indvidual.

This was the beauty of the man Gandhi that he always looked in the brighter and positive side of a person, He never bothered about the negative side. For example Gandhi was fully knowing that Pt. Jawaherlal Nehru was not agreening centpercent with him, but he never bother his mind, he was using positive approch on the points where he was agreeing with him and never allowed the negative approch to bother his mind. And this was the case with everyone Gandhi came in contact with.

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This 13 part series on Democracy threw an excellent understanding of the need and nature of democracy in the Gandhian era and its reflections in todays' world.

What Gandhiji believed was that individual responsibility and self-governance would bring more powerful democratic structure into existence, not just the sharing of power and active public participation.

Despite being the pioneer of any democratic movement in the world, he knew its loopholes. For him, “Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world.” But, the discipline he mentioned here is the crucial aspect of the whole system of democracy and it lies in the many facets of an individual.such as self-restraint, right education and dutifullness.

ABji, thanks for bringing a different dimension of this aspect of democracy.

I once walked away from a $140,000 scholarship because I saw my Law degree was teaching me to lie to be a lawyer. Don't you think the degree helped him think critically, though? I'm touring Law Schools for this reason.